In Mary Queen of Scots' tragic life the year 1566 was full of critical events. She had realized the worthlessness and treachery of Lord Darnley, whom she had married the previous year. She was expecting the child that became James VI of Scotland and James I of England. He was born in June of 1566. Less than three months before, some Scottish lords, in league with Darnley, broke into her apartments at night and dragged her unpopular Italian minister and lover, David Rizzio, from bed while Darnley himself held her down. The murderers almost cut Rizzio to pieces in an ante-room.

A little before the birth of her son, Mary made out an inventory of her jewels, which included some that Rizzio had given to her and a valuable diamond cross which she had always worn concealed in her dress, because it was the gift of an important European personage that might have complicated her difficult dealings with the Scottish Protestants. Some believed that the cross had been given to her through Rizzio by the Pope himself.

That inventory of her jewels and directions for bequeathing some of them to her friends if she died was handed to David Rizzio's brother Joseph, who had become her secretary. In it she instructed Joseph Rizzio to hand the diamond cross to the person whose name he knew. She would not write it down.

Historians knew nothing whatever about this until the Queen's inventory was discovered anong law papers in the Record Office in 1854, and it was not published until 1863.

But in November, 1845, nine years before the discovery, Major Buckley, an officer in India who experimented in hypnotism, was practising on a young officer who went into a trance, and said that a medallion of Anthony and Cleopatra which belonged to Major Buckley was very valuable because it had been given to Mary Queen of Scots by an Italian musician.

The hypnotized officer then described and copied out some writing he could see on a piece of parchment. Rizzio's name was on it, and also, he said, "I see a diamond cross... It was worn out of sight by Mary..." The medallion (which he said was on a ring) he declared "was taken off Mary's finger by a man in anger and jealousy; he threw it into the water. When he took it off she was being carried in a kind of bed with curtains."

There is no explanation of this mystery, though "clairvoyants" would say that the medallion belonging to Major Buckley acted as a psychic link. If it had once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots it might have put the hypnotized officer into the mental wave-length of that turbulent and tragic past.

Anyhow the story was thought worth recording by Dr. Gregory, a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh University last century. Moreover, Dr. Gregory published his account in 1851, three years before the discovery of the Queen's list of jewels which proved the diamond cross had actually existed. He had no idea of the documentary evidence hidden in the Record Ofiice, being interested only in hypnotism.

SOURCE: The Dream World by Rodolphe L. Megroz, p.217-9. His source is Andrew Lang's Dreams and Ghosts (page unspecified).

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